


margalit

by thefudge



Series: jake gyllenhaal doesn't need a hug [1]
Category: Actor RPF, American (US) Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: F/M, Jake Gyllenhaal is a messy fuckboi in this one (just like irl), Sibling Bonding, Sibling Incest, Sibling Rivalry, it's actually more ambiguous than incesty, it's fiction guys, kind of fucked up but it's me so, ost: new order - temptation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 23:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19072855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: He misses being her brother in a movie. It was different, more honest. (Jake/Maggie)





	margalit

**Author's Note:**

> SO. long story short: this has been in my drafts for a while as a "what if" project, cuz i'm weird (incidentally, i have a dozen other such projects). And I like to make yall weird with me. 
> 
> Some of the snippets here are based on actual trivia or things that happened, like the Jimmy Fallon interview that I quote from or Jake being a lifeguard or the 2006 fire, but other stuff is total fiction, obviously. and even the "real" stuff is filtered through fiction.  
> so...enjoy! 
> 
> (this kinda came about after i read some gossip about jake being kind of a d-bag to women, but again, this is just fiction, so keep that in mind)

***

 

“You can go suck a fuck” was improvised.

It’s one of those pieces of sibling trivia that punchy editorials are made for.

Jake was content never letting that cat out of the bag, but Maggie runs her mouth. She’s not secretive, the way he is. She’s not, as per her words, “a cagey asshole who’s got something to hide”.

 _Yeah, no, that was totally on the fly,_ she’s quoted saying. _Richard Kelly just told us to argue like we normally would and ermm, that’s what came out, haha. We actually had a debate afterwards, about sucking a fuck. How one would go about it._

Jake remembers that debate. It’s the one vivid thing he remembers about shooting _Donnie Darko._ That whole movie was a brilliant exercise in spacing out.

He scrolls down. The magazine has embedded the video of the “iconic” scene. He makes a face, but clicks on it anyway.

Okay, he’s proud of his archness. The way he points his finger at his sister and enunciates, “you’re _such_ a fuckass”. Even as a baby-faced nobody he acted like he knew what he was saying. Maggie looks unkempt and beautiful. Her hair’s still got some yellow eggshell in it. It’s not dark yet. He misses being her brother in a movie. It was different, more honest.

Could he call her up right now and tell her to go suck a fuck?

Nah, it just wouldn’t have the same poetry.

 

 

 

For her birthday one year Peter gifts her one of those ridiculous electric blankets with an outsized close-up of her smile printed on it.

“For your cold feet,” he says, tongue-in-cheek.

Maggie hugs him fiercely. “This is so bizarre and sweet.”

Jake sits opposite the two, twirls his fork absently into his tagliatelle and wonders if “cold feet” is a sly reference to their married life. Probably not. He’s sort of annoyed that his gift now looks cold and unimaginative by comparison. He just got her front-row seats at her favorite opera singer in Prague. Yeah, Maggie likes the opera and even has favorite sopranos. Meh.

He might’ve thought about going with her to Prague and maybe take the whole family too, mom and dad included. Skip her kids and husband, just the ol’ Gyllenhaals in the original 90s formation. But that’s probably unrealistic. And dumb.

He reaches for his glass of wine.

One of Maggie’s oldest friends decides to crack a poorly-timed joke.

“Okay, hand to heart, in a fire who’d you save? Brother or blanket?”

Maggie whoops with laughter. She wipes her left eye, as if something’s spilling out. “Oh, come on, that’s not fair!”

Jake makes a good pretense of laughing. Haha, really tough choice indeed.

But “brother or blanket” is a fucking idiotic alliteration. Like a weird scab you keep scratching because it annoys you too much to let it heal.

He texts her a few days later. _Brother or blanket?_

Maggie replies with laughing emojis. Wasn’t that a fun night?

Jake crawls back into bed.

 

 

 

The thing is, he’s not a commitment-phobe, or whatever other adult-shaming terms are popular these days.

He’s just never definitively happy with anyone, and it’s a problem. He needs to feel like he _can_ be happy, but he usually finds something wrong with that person, something that can’t be fixed.

Maggie points that out a lot.

“Look, I love you because you’re my brother but you’re a shitty person. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even be your friend. You’re _awful_ to your girlfriends, just awful.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m saying this because I care about the non-asshole part of you.”

“Noted.”

“If there still _is_ such a part.”

Jake smiles. He’s always been told his smile - really his whole face - looks vulnerable, like soft bread. He looks like the perfect sad boy, the victim rather than the perpetrator.  

Maggie hits him in the chest. “Don’t go all Care Bear on me. You know I’m right.”

“Well, I can’t change overnight, can I?”

“You could make an effort. What was wrong with the last one?”

 _I don’t know, I don’t care,_ he thinks, watching her put the mini-muffins in the oven. She’s not even good at baking, by all standards, but she’s always got to keep her hands busy when she’s dealing with him.

 _I don’t know, I don’t care_ , he repeats silently in his head, watching her wipe the counter. Her wrist is too thin, he thinks. She’s always been too skinny. Coltish, like a young mare. He pictures her eating all those muffins, gorging on them breathlessly, sugary crumbs dangling from her lips. His thoughts get carried away. _Nothing was wrong with the last one._ _Why don’t you get on the counter and take off your yoga pants?_

It’s such a weird left turn. His brain is full of lewd detritus, nothing worth keeping.

He lowers his head. Jesus, he didn’t have to go straight for that, though.

“You okay?” she asks him.

He gives her some dumb excuse about the _Nightcrawler_ shoot and how it’s kind of getting to him.

But the truth is he’s not that affected. He’s not that ashamed.

 

 

Acting with your sister is great because you’re always her brother and she’s always your sister and you’re basically kids and even if you throw words like “fuck” at each other, you’re basically untouchable. It’s not like his film veteran parents would make him watch his sister do something unseemly.

But then they grow up and his sister starts acting in exactly _those_ kinds of movies.

Suddenly, _Secretary_.

Jake is twenty-two when the movie comes out. His sister is twenty-five.

He never told any therapist this, but even if he did, he doesn’t think they’d hold it against him because everyone agrees _Secretary_ is all about getting off. Yes, it’s lush and smart and sexy, but it also demands you to do something about it. It’s a love letter to sadomasochism, penned somehow specially to him.

I mean, how would you react if you had to watch your sister getting spanked? 

He’s lost track of the number of times he’s masturbated to it. The problem is not that he does it, he’s sure many people have. It’s when he chooses to come.

Maggie is the goddamn protagonist so nine times out of ten - oh come on, it’s ten for ten and he knows it - he’ll climax on a close-up of his sister, her face, her dopey smile, her tight little office skirt, her hands locked in that pillory, God, he _loves_ the pillory. There’s even a scene where she masturbates too. 

Sometimes he times himself to James Spader who jerks off on her bare ass as she’s bent over his desk. Sometimes he comes at the same time as he does and he gets to watch his sister tremble under the weight of her shame. 

He used to feel the urge to punch Spader in the face whenever they happened to meet at parties, but then he was also immensely grateful. He wanted to go up to him and say, _thank you for your service._

Which is pretty fucked up.

But it’s the movie. It wants you to get off.

 

 

 

(or maybe he really is a shitty person)

 

 

 

It’s 2014, he’s on Jimmy Fallon talking about his sister acting on Broadway and he’s the one who runs his mouth this time.

Jimmy asks him whether he went to see her pre-show undercover. Jake tells him he tried to sneak in without her knowledge.

“But she, like, _smelled_ me, my sister. My sister's like,” he sniffs dramatically, “my brother is here.”

Afterwards he gushes about her performance, laying it on real thick.

“I know I’m biased, but I’m kinda not, because I’m her little brother so I gotta be _tough_ , but she was - yeah, she was extraordinary.”

Maggie calls him afterwards.

“I can _smell_ you?”

He runs a hand over his face. “That’s the part you focused on?”

“Okay, now I gotta think. How _do_ you smell? I should grab my gym bag for reference.”

“You don’t go to the gym.”

“Well, if I did.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence because she’s still thinking about his potential smell. And he’s thinking about her thinking about it.

He remembers that short-lived stint as a lifeguard when he was sixteen. He remembers smelling of chlorine and cocoa butter for days; somehow the two smells are related. He remembers nineteen-year old Maggie on summer break from Columbia. She wanted people to start calling her “Meg”, but it never really stuck. She came to see him at the water park with her then boyfriend. He can’t remember his name and she’s pretty sure she can’t either.

The cocoa butter was her, now that he really thinks about it. When she hugged him tight and he jokingly smacked her bikini-clad ass and told her to stop embarrassing him in front of the crew.

Yeah, that. That smell.

 

 

 

It’s 2005, he’s still got a fucked-up back from _Seabiscuit_ and he misses out on _Batman Begins,_ even though he thought he had a chance.  

It’s 2007 and Maggie is cast as Rachel Dawson, Bruce Wayne’s on-again off-again girlfriend.  

They joke about it briefly, good-humoredly, _hey_ , _we could’ve played love interests! Imagine the media frenzy!_

And then Heath dies. Heath, who taught him how to kiss, how to actually kiss like it matters. He’d fallen in love with Heath and his bottled effervescence. Somehow, everything is tangled up with his sister and those stupid fucking Batman movies.

He experiments with depression for a short while. Maggie lies down next to him in bed and caresses his bushy brows. She likes them that way, she tells him.

“Please be okay,” she says softly. _Don’t go the same way_ , she means to say. Because it feels like all the signs are there.

He laughs at the idea, happy that she’s scared for him. He scoots closer and nuzzles his nose against hers.

Maggie leans forward and kisses him briefly on the lips. It’s not the first time - family will accidentally peck like that. But this time his mouth waters a little for the taste of the tip of her tongue. That pink tip. She retreats before he gets a chance, licks her lips for good measure, and smiles innocently at him.

Jake thinks, _fucking cunt bitch, you should apologize with your mouth_ , and he closes his eyes and buries his head in the pillow. Maggie strokes his back. He tries to erase the phantom blowjob from his mind.

 

 

That’s why he’s such a revelation in arthouse films about shitty, hollowed-out men who secretly want to tie women up.

  
  


 

He really regrets the three-month stint with the pop singer. She’d be sleeping next to him and he’d be watching _Secretary_ on _her_ private laptop and touching himself under the covers, picturing the shock on her face if she woke up right there and then.

That stupid pouty lamb face, maimed by horror and disgust.

But she never did.

It was kind of disappointing. She wrote songs about him, about how he didn’t treat her right, how he stood her up a few times, gave her the silent treatment, kiddie stuff really. She ignored the skeletons in the closet, because he made sure they weren’t there.

Yeah, there was that line about her scarf at his sister’s house. And for half a day he panicked, thinking she’d figured something out - something about him that he’d contained so far. But then he realized it was just a braggy way for her to say he still kept something of her.  

Haha, stupid bitch. She knows nothing.

 

 

 

He’s not a psycho, not really violent, not a myopic bad guy. He can be sweet and kind and giving, although maybe not exactly forgiving.

It’s just that somewhere along the way he decided to meander through life and his sister didn’t follow him. She got stable, got her college degree, got married, popped out a couple of kids, she even got a little frumpy. The kind of “serious mom” frumpy.

She used to joke how he’s definitely the hotter sibling and she just has to cope with being the ugly duckling.

He told her to shut up, told her she’s absolutely gorgeous, but all the while thinking, _you were gorgeous when you were alone. When we were alone._

They’ll never be as in sync as they were in that scene in _Donnie Darko_. They’ll never breathe the same charged air, they’ll never want to talk about sucking a fuck.

They don’t even fight anymore, not really. They used to pinch each other’s flesh, right under the armpit. They used to spit in each other’s drinks for fun. They used to do screaming contests. She sometimes jumped on him in the shower and started singing Mariah Carey’s, “Vision of Love”, loudly in his ear until he cry-laughed. They used to.

 

 

 

Incidentally, there _was_ a fire.

Back in 2006. They were vacationing together, staying at the same hotel, sharing a room. That one time, you know, in the San Francisco Bay area. They could’ve afforded separate rooms but this was nicer, homier. It was one of those popular lodges where all dead celebrities used to mingle one time or another. She’d recently given birth to her first child and was dealing with heavy postpartum depression. One day he just came and picked her up and told her to leave her cell phone at home. And if she argued he’d make her leave other things too.

The fire started from a fallen tree.

They got out in time. He held her to him while she cried.

It was okay, she was just relieved. He kissed the top of her head until he felt a dent.

That’s why it’s a bad joke, _brother or blanket_.

Who would he leave behind in the fire for her? It’s better not to think about it.

 

 

 

They do a lot of red carpets together. They don’t usually plan outfits or match colors but they always seem to go well together. Peter jokes that they sometimes look like crazy cult leaders, especially that one time at the MET Gala when they go as each other’s “dates” and she’s a colorful pixie blonde while he’s wearing a white tux and an extra-long beard. Her dress has a long slit for a cleavage and he whispers in her ear that it’s a good thing he’s here, looking after her in case something spills out.

Maggie looks at him with a confused, indulgent smile.

He says, “don’t you remember eighth grade when you accidentally exposed yourself to all our parents’ friends?”

She blinks. And refocuses. “ _Jesus_ , I’d forgotten. Hah, that fruit punch was extra strong.”

“All over your shirt, yeah.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten or eleven,” he says, putting his arm around her waist for the camera.

“That must’ve scarred you for life.”

He looks at her with a wry smile. “Sure. If you wanna call it that.”

  


 

 

“Okay, it’s four AM. I have to be on set at eight. This better be good,” she mumbles over the phone.

“I’m holding your birth certificate in my hands,” he says distinctly, like he hasn’t slept a wink. Like he’s a fucking psychopath.

Maggie groans. “Good for you?”

“Your name’s not Maggie.”

“...yeah, okay. I’m Mary Magdalene.”

“Not even Margaret. Mom and dad wrote you down as Margalit.”

There’s a long, disoriented pause.

“Did you just say margarine?”

“No. I said Margalit.”

“What’s that?”

“Your name, on the certificate.”

“Bullshit.”

“Taking a photo and sending it to you.”

Maggie is too tired to suffer an identity crisis, even when she sees he is goddamn right. The most she can do is waffle.

“Holy shit.”

“Imagine living your whole life not knowing you’re actually a Margalit,” he taunts. “I mean, say it with me, _Margalit_.”

Maggie pinches the bridge of her nose. “You’re too fucking pleased with yourself.”

He laughs. “I am, aren’t I?”

“I can’t believe it. What are you doing with my birth certificate anyway?”

“I was going through some family albums.”

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“Uhh, yes?”

Jake scratches his beard. “I guess I miss you.”

“Come and see me, you weirdo.”

“Margalit. Shit," he says, not really acknowledging her invitation.

“Yeah. Shit. That's me," she drawls. "It's different, at least.”

Jake sucks in a breath. "Okay. Go back to bed.”

They both hang up with a sense of something left unfinished.

Neither falls asleep.

She contemplates her new name.

He thinks about how he always knew she was two people in one, one of them was his sister, and the other one belonged to everyone else.

And somehow, he feels like he lost both. 

**Author's Note:**

> the Margalit thing is totally real btw, she found out when she was 36. k, byeeeeeee


End file.
